70 BOOKS Stlmmer Reading-Mrs. Buck's Realism-The Next War qh::: t , A MAN I knew backed an thro- pology against meteor- ology and won hands down. He spent a torrid summer plod- ding raptly through the many volumes of "The Golden Bough" and found Sir James Frazer a perfect antidote for the humidity. Dusting the mind with literary talcum powder during the hot months is the sheerest futility. Give it a rest from books entirely or else feed it some- thing to chew on. Keeping this basic principle before me, I have gone through some outstanding titles of the past six months. Here are a dozen or so recommendations for your vaca- tion bags; and thumbs down on ham- mock fiction. r.l : '!Uf{f 'LÜi L.. f2:!J fl1: , , .1:::. '( .. '.',', Ó " , D ETECTIVE stories, of course, are not light reading. They are technical books for amateur students, and as such they should be listed and enjoyed. Dorothy Sayers-she and Austin Freeman outdistance the field, in my opinion-ran off a first-rate yarn a few months ago with "Mur- der M ust Advertise," all about the relations-almost incestuous-between an ad vertising agency and a dope ring. Those who dislike the Sayers- Freeman school ( ob- jective, scientific, dryly witty) probably like the Rinehart tradition (suspects and senti- mentality) and will go for "The Album." Though sleuth fiction of the higher order will probably always re- main an Englishman's game, Barnaby Ross in "The Tragedy of Z" puts up a fairly good American exhibit. A convenient carryall is , "The Crime Club 'f(: Golden Book of Best Detective Stories," which offers tales short and long by Leslie Charteris, Edgar \Val- lace, Mignon E ber hart, and other second- s t r i n g dependables. Cold shivers for hot weather are to be found in Guy En- dore's "The Werewolf of Paris," an excursion into the macabre which is con vincing mainly because it is so well written. A general level of interesting com- petence, rather than genuine distinc- tion, marks the season's fiction; but there are a number of notable novels appropriate enough for a thoughtful summer. The only really first-rate job I can recollect is Jules Romains' "Men of Good Will." Evelyn Scott's "Eva Gay" is important but over-long; Con- rad Aiken's "Great Circle" is a fine piece of psychoanalytic story-telling. Two regional novels by young writers, Gladys Hasty Carroll's "As the Earth Turns" and Marjorie Kinnan Raw- lings' "South Moon Under," show promise. Mrs. Rawlings seems to me the better of the two; Mrs. Carroll perhaps carries her New England wholesomeness to an uncomfortable extreme. A young novelist who, though he has considerable to learn, reveals more wit and passion and beauty of style than nine-tenths of his contempo- raries is Vincent McHugh, whose "Sing Before Breakfast" you may wish to discover for yourself. Cozzens' "The Last Adam" I suppose everybody has %W ø..m:- ... ..::-':. . t read; and F allada' s "Little Man, What Now?" everybody is reading. In the field of the short story, there is Edna Ferber's very brisk and competent collection, "They Brought Their Women," but I do not find it pleasant to read her, because I contin- ually get the impression that she could do much better if she would only try harder. A more interesting, less tradi- tional group of stories (by assorted American authors) will be found in Edward J. O'Brien's "The Best Short Stories 1933," published this week by Houghton Mifflin. This anthology, while not as brilliant as some of its predecessors, contains two very fine tales by Robert Cantwell and Erskine Caldwell and only one really bad one -Louise Lambertson's "Sleet Storm," which passes us right to the third floor back. But if you have room in your bag for only one substantial volume, let it be the "Traveller's Library," brillian tly edited by Somerset Maug- ham. This contains 1,700 pages of magnificent reading matter-novels, short stories, poems, essays-and in- cludes such classics, all worth going back to, as "Nocturne," "The Old Wives' Tale," "Youth," and "The Happy Hypocrite." Here you wiH also . nræl" t% w f : lç - "Hey, how do you g-et out of this thing?"